Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to start attracting traffic is publish great content consistently!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase of the traffic automation process. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this article, we will look at the configuration stage of this process. We will show you what makes an expertly configured WordPress site different than a professionally configured one, and how much work is required to ensure that when everything is set up and configured, new visitors will automatically start flowing when you publish new content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With business becoming so much more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth learning about any advantage available to increase your own competitiveness online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a huge competitive advantage. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives you a significant competitive advantage from the very beginning.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to describe the main difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does it take additional work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
Allow me to illustrate this point with an amusing story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Everything was running smoothly in the gizmo manufacturing plant when things ground to a sudden halt.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately walked to the main control box. After staring silently at the wiring diagrams for 3 minutes, the expert then produced a teeny-weeny hammer and made a very gentle tap near the left side of the control unit.
Immediately, the assembly line sprang back to life.
The plant manager was overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager received a request of payment for services for the amount of $5,000.
The factory manager picked up the phone and dialled the expert, demanding to know why they were being charged so much for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors consistently to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to ask to be compensated fairly for years spent acquiring the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to quickly fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WP site set up so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other web properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
While many experts often make complicated things look easy, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than just installing a website and configuring basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install to add desired functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up and activate to get desired results
- Which settings you need to configure to make sure things work as planned, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite involved and complicated. It’s not as simple as installing one or two plugins, configuring some settings in your dashboard area or clicking a button … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration phase is a process that involves your web hosting server, your website, and various third-party sites …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the configuration process)
Let’s examine these steps.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is tweaking settings and options in your web-hosting account that affect how your website will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your business may attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for both bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like integrating server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these, the next step is to set up and configure a number of third-party sites and online services.
Third-Party Sites Integration
The purpose of choosing external sites is that all content will get published to one central location (your site) and from there, it will be distributed automatically to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external platforms have been added to your network, content linking back to your site gets automatically added to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social sites, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your content and website will then receive increased exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some of the web properties and online services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress settings to speed up the configuration process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up before configuring your WordPress site:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with important information, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your Google Webmasters account, you can use the details with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up your Google Analytics account, you can add traffic tracking code to WordPress using a Google Analytics plugin and feed data instantly to other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account and entering site data with Bing, use your account information to integrate and automate traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers users the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to build a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your automated traffic system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your various social media and social bookmarking accounts before you can integrate these with your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and attract new traffic to your site.
Set up accounts with all the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can set up. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose those that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(There are lots of social sites you can post your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging technology platforms and content aggregators that can serve as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your social feed.
There are many different platforms that can be incorporated into your own web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and frequently overlooked traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, this section includes only one entry …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically …
(WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
***
Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading Settings
This section affects how your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence traffic. For example, your choice to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website to get the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting here as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Typically, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to ping all the update services you have listed in the Update Services section when a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion Settings
Although the settings in this section are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs linked to from your articles, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your post permalinks …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
To learn more about setting up permalinks, see this tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you simply cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your sites.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and botnets.
Go here to learn more:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by improving your site’s SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with members of their online communities can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social sharing to your site easily using free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site with free or inexpensive plugins.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to select which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, many themes also include built-in options for improving SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a free theme) allow you to configure settings and options for improved traffic results)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Automation – Additional Configuration Areas
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do any kind of business online (or plan to), it’s important that your site is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
We have created a detailed article on the importance of having a legally compliant website here:
WordPress Categories & Tags
WordPress post categories & tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your web pages.
(WordPress categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s post tags and post categories should be discussed and set up during the Website Planning Stage.
When configuring your web site to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal results.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A visitor site map that displays all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications discover more of your online content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although search engines like Google can index your site just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Your WordPress 404 Page Not Found
When visitors type in the wrong URL or click on hyperlinks pointing to pages on your website that no longer exist, they will normally be presented with a 404 error page …
(A 404 Page)
A 404 page can redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your server, there are plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do is add new content consistently to start attracting traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of various elements and external web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of expertise required to perform this process can take some website developers a long time to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is addressed in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Part Three
To continue reading this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of an article series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively and drive traffic automatically using a WordPress website and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.
Subscribe Using The Form Below And Get Notified Of New WordPress Tutorials!
***
"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
***